


Fabricated

by inlovewithnight



Category: Iron Man (2008)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 03:34:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	Fabricated

Tony's been missing for two weeks.

James hurts up and down and inside out, the base of his neck aching where tension moved in and set up shop and hasn't moved for fourteen days, his eyes strained from staring at maps and reports and radar screens, his throat sore from snapping at one damn soldier after another. They're all good kids and they're all trying, but they're not bringing back the answers he wants to hear and he's not going to give them any slack until they get it right.

Every so often--every few days, maybe, but it's hard to keep track--he gets yanked back to the States, thrown on a plane and flown around the world to make a report and try to explain why he still doesn't have the right answers, why he still doesn't have a time and a place and a body. Live or dead, nobody else cares; they just need something to point to, and Jim Rhodes is failing to bring in the goods.

He volunteered to be the point man on this operation. More than volunteered, he flat-out insisted that he be the one in charge of the chaotic mess that is Looking For Tony In The Motherfucking Desert. He's always been kind of a stupid man where loyalty's concerned. And where Tony's concerned. The intersection of the two is a bitch and a half.

The miracles of time zones and upper brass needing plenty of time for their lunches means that as the plane touches down on day fourteen--or after day fourteen; maybe time zones aren't a miracle at all--he should have a good three hours to crawl off into a corner and sleep. Ease some of the burning in his eyes, tone down some of the confusion in his head. Three whole hours. And it isn't even his birthday. It's going to be beautiful.

Except that when he steps off the plane, Pepper's waiting on the tarmac, eyes narrow and jaw tight, the same vaguely shell-shocked strain showing that James can feel around his own edges. "Obadiah wants to start planning a memorial service," she says, and James misses a step down off the ramp, catching himself on her arm just before he winds up eating tarmac.

"The hell he does," he answers, because he can't think of anything else to say. Pepper nods at the car, where Happy's slouched behind the wheel looking like anything but his name, and the chance of those three hours goes up in smoke.  
**  
Obadiah's office is ridiculous. All of the offices at Stark Industries are ridiculous, from what James has seen, but Obie's really takes the cake, all leather and oak and a weird kind of longing for Howard Stark and the good old days. A few too many pictures of him and Howard leaning on each other, the World War II propaganda posters given a little too much pride of place, a little battleship in a bottle that's just one step too close to absurd...random tiny things that add up to James wanting to roll his eyes, except it's Obadiah Stane's carpet he's standing on and James made a point of only losing his manners on neutral ground.

"It's not like that, Jim," Obie says, folding his hands on his desk and looking at James oh so earnestly. "Of course I'm not giving up. I believe we're going to find Tony and bring him home, one hundred percent."

It's on the tip of his tongue to point out that there is no _we_, there is himself and the men and women under his command and there is the desert and all of that is very, very far away from here, but he's not quite exhausted enough to completely lose his grip, it seems. "Then there's no reason to plan a service."

Obie's smile is wide and white and a little too much, too, a little too at home in this room. "It's just covering all bases, Jim. I can't help it, it's a reflex, I've got to have a half-dozen contingency plans for any potential fork in the road. Even the ones that aren't gonna happen, I have to be prepared. Humor an old man, Jim. It's how I deal with the world."

His eyes hurt and his head hurts and he shouldn't have come here just because Pepper looked sad; Obadiah Stane is never in a million years going to listen to anything coming out of the mouth of James Rhodes. "I'm worried that it sends a mixed message."

"It sends _no_ message." Obie's got the kindly-but-firm-old-grandfather shtick out in full force and James starts mentally rolling up his arguments, giving in. He'll work around Obie if he has to. Not the first time, not the last. "It's just contingency planning, Jim, setting things up, I'm not placing any orders with the florists."

"Florists," James echoes, knowing he sounds stupid, not able to think of anything else to say. He's too tired for this, and there's still the debriefing and all of the promises to be made before he's back on the plane and can grab some sleep while the plane cuts across the planet and carves up time like a turkey. "You think you're going to have _flowers_ at a memorial for Tony Stark."

"They come standard with this sort of thing," Obie says. James shakes his head and takes his first step toward the door. "Well, what would you suggest instead, then, Jim?"

"I don't know." He doesn't owe Obadiah Stane an answer, he doesn't owe him anything, but he does owe Tony some things as his friend. He owes him at least remembering who he was. "But not flowers. Tony barely even noticed flowers exist. Cars and gears and wire, booze, girls...that's the stuff Tony noticed, the stuff he cared about. Remember him with that."

Obie raises an eyebrow, and it seems to James that his smile ought to be a little more wistful than as amused as it is, but he's too damn tired to try to figure that out. "You think I should build the ceremony around hot rods and strippers?"

"Not going to be any need for a ceremony." He's reminding himself as much as Obie, tapping his fist against his leg as he says it in chastisement for the momentary slip. "We're going to find him and bring him home."

Obie inclines his head and looks back down at the papers on his desk, a silent dismissal, and James lets himself out, shaking his head and making himself picture a Tony Stark memorial service, white roses and a gospel choir singing _Swing Low, Sweet Chariot_, trying to make himself laugh so he'll keep moving instead of standing still to cry.  
**  
Something like eight days later he's back in that office again, hauled across town between briefings by the new, not-at-all-improved, expressionless Happy who goes with the snappish and edgy Pepper. At this point he's so tired he fell asleep in the car on that short trip, mid-sentence of a complaint about how he didn't give a damn what Obadiah Stane wanted from him, he needed to get back to his plane and back to the desert, to make the most out of the search authority while he still had it, because the boys in charge were already making noises about rolling it back.

He's pretty sure that Happy and Pepper didn't wake him up because they didn't need to hear it; they would much prefer he was back over there, too. Anywhere but standing in Obie's office staring at the thing in front of his desk.

"What do you think?" Obie says, taking a cigar out of his humidor and beaming. "It's just what you suggested."

"It is?" James doesn't remember suggesting anything, but he's remembering most things in bits and pieces at the moment, so he's not sure he can take his own word for anything. "What is it?"

"Tony's kind of flowers." Obie comes around the desk and stands next to the thing, which is about three feet tall, freestanding, all metal and glass and wire twisted together and reaching up for the ceiling. "See, this bit here, that's a fender off an old hot rod, and this is the same grade of wire Tony developed for the arc reactor, this one's made of gears welded together, that one's made of melted down and fused bottles of Scotch..."

James stares at the statue and yeah, he can see it now as Obie points them out, the leaves and stems and flowers, the facets of Tony he'd tossed out in exhaustion and anger given form in metal and glass. Obie's still talking, but James only hears it as an indistinct mumble as he steps forward, staring at the surfaces gleaming dull under the lights.

"You had this commissioned?" he asks, reaching out to touch one of the flowers, tracing his fingertip along the slick surface.

"Yeah." Obie puffs at his cigar and steps back, smiling that enigmatic little smile that still isn't quite sad enough. There's something there, just beyond what James can get himself to focus on right now, beyond the smooth metal under his fingers and the reflected light that wants to dazzle his tired eyes. "One of the top artists in the country."

"Whoever he is works fast." His hand follows the curve of a petal, and he wonders at the grace of it, the skill it must have taken to make it look so alive when it's just steel and paint.

"She, actually. Seemed appropriate for Tony." James wrinkles his nose absently as Obie takes another puff on the cigar. "A woman's touch and all."

The edge of the petal bites deep into James' finger, and he hisses, yanking his hand back to his side. "Shit."

"Careful," Obie says, shaking his head and pulling his handkerchief from his pocket. "It's sharp."

James wraps the cloth around his finger and squeezes tight, frowning at the statue. "It doesn't look like it."

"You know what they say about appearances." Obie rests his hand on James' shoulder, heavy and solid enough to almost throw him off-balance. "Deceptive."

"That's what they tell me," James mutters, still staring at the glass and metal and the single streak of blood under the lights. His shoulders tense to keep from shrugging Obie's hand away, and he wishes he could think better, or see more clearly, that he wasn't too damn tired to put together the little scraps and pieces that are accumulating in the back of his mind. He has a hunch that they fit together into something like these flowers, a whole new creature made out of stuff that seemed like junk.

When he can get some sleep. When he gets his brain back. It'll all make sense then, when they bring Tony home.


End file.
